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Switched On: Early Electronic Oddities

EARLY ELECTRONIC ODDITIES is an exploration of the strange and subliminal sounds of early electronic musical instruments from 1860 to 1970, and many now almost obsolete daring and experimental creations like the Mixtur-Trautonium, the Ondes-Martenot, the Rhythmicon, the Ondioline, the RCA synthesizer, electro-theremin and the inventions of the Italian Futurists and Raymond Scott. Live discussions, field recordings and amazingly unearthed rare recordings presented by two theremin players, Miss Hypnotique and Bruce Woolley. Features recorded contributions by Bob Moog and Jean-Jacques Perrey.
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Download MP3's of the archived broadcast:

[Early Electronic Oddities Pt. 1 (33 MB)] // [Early Electronic Oddities Pt. 2 (30 MB)]

(*Originally broadcast 10/29/04 on London's Resonance 104.4fm.)

Playlist:

Part 1:
1. Radio Nottingham - the Radiophonic Workshop
2. Chorale - Antonio Russolo
3. Celestial Nocturne - Samuel Hoffman (theremin)
4. Concerto for Ondes-Martenot - Andre Jolivet featuring Jeanette Martenot
5. Various soundtracks - Paul Tanner plays Electro-theremin
6. Now in heaven you can hear the latest Fall album - Hypnotique (Rhythmicon)
7. Jean-Jacques talk about the Ondioline
8. Demonstration from Fantasy for Mixtur-Trautonium - Oscar Sala
9. Telstar - The Tornadoes (Clavioline)

Part 2:
10: Bob Moog - talks about the RCA Synthesizer (background music: the Man from Uranus)
11: Nola - Felix Arndt (RCA synthesizer)
12. Return of the Elohim Pt 1- Zorch (VSC3)
13. CoilANS - Coil (ANS synthesizer)
14. Silver apples of the moon - Morton Subotnik (Buchla Modular)
15: Bob Moog talks about Raymond Scott (music from 'Manhattan Space Research')
16: Zwi Zwi oo oo oo - Delia Derbyshire (Wobbulator)
17: Modified clarinet - Reed Ghazal (Circuit Bent instrument)
18: In a Delian Mode - Delia Derbyshire (Radiophonic Workshop)
19. Return of the Elohim Pt 2 - Zorch (VSC3)
20: Futurama (Raymond Scott advert)

Written resources:

Early Sound Experiments

Even before the invention of electricity, man has experimented with mechanics to produce sound, from ancient Tibetan prayers wheels and the Greek's Aeolian Harp's which were played by the wind, through to the first wind up barrel organ in the sixteenth century, and in the eighteenth century, mechanical birds and the glass harmonica which anticipated the sound of electronics.

In 1752, the world became, quite literally Switched On, when Benjamin Franklin performed his famous experiment with a kite, drawing down electricity from the clouds and first stimulating the fusion of science and nature which is electricity. One of the founding fathers of electricity, Thomas Edison, illuminated the world with his demonstration of the light bulb in 1879, two years after inventing the phonograph. Telegraphs and telephony began to connect people, and in 1910 the first radio broadcast took place in New York. The world became connected by the power of electricity, and sound produced through electricity and electronic sound reproduction was set to take over the 20th century.

The story of early electronic instruments is the story of pioneers, dreamers, schemers and losers. It's a story of bold ideas and bad debts, bizarre lives and forgotten deaths, and events of "synchronicity" - actions which extend beyond mere coincidence. The relationship between sounds found in our environment and music has become closer, classical instruments and the old masters have become increasingly redundant, as new sonic possibilities have been unleashed to challenge the warring world.

The Futurists

Before electronic instruments became commonplace in the 1910s and 1920s, the Italian avant-garde Futurists called for an exploration into the possibilities of new sound worlds in their manifestos, like Busoni's exploration of Microtonal Harmony and the breaking of classical timbres in Russolo's Art of Noises. The futurists experimented with homemade 'sound boxes' to produce original and novel sounds. Edgar Varese, composer of percussive-sonic piece Ionisation saw the scope for 'sound producing machines' that would ultimately lead to the 'liberation of sound'.

The first electronic instruments

Towards the end of the 19th century, a number of instruments that can be considered electronic were invented by scientists and academics. Helmholtz's 1860 'Helmholtz Resonanator' used electro-magnetic vibrating glass and metal sphere to create different sensations of tone.

Although Elisha Gray was piped by Alexander Graham Bell to the patent of the telephone by just a few hours, he didn't miss a beat when he invented the Musical Telegraph in 1876 which amplified sounds from an electronic oscillator - the world's first electronic keyboard.

The greatest of the early electronic beasts, the Telharmonium, was drawn to live like Frankenstein's monster by Thomas Cahill in 1906. The 200 tonne 60 foot long sand, water and cement constructed keyboard instrument used dynamos to produce alternating current over various audio frequencies. Controlled by many keyboards, gears and wires and amplified by giant acoustic horns, the idea was to hook up the machine to a phone network to pipe music into restaurants, stores and theatres - a forerunner to Musak. So vast was the machine, during concerts it broke the stage, and the machine interfered with the phone network, so consequently it died a death before the first world war. Cahill was ahead of his time; it was to be another 50 years before electronic keyboard instruments finally caught on, as the principle of the Telharmonium formed the basis of one of the most successful electronic instruments of all time - the Hammond organ.

Vacuum tube technology

De Forest was a prolific inventor with 300 patents to his name. Shortly after a failed collaboration with Thomas "Telharmonium" Cahill, De Forest discovered a method of combining two inaudible high-frequency sound waves to produce an audible low-frequency wave, a technique called heterodyning, or beat frequency oscillation. In 1915, De Forest created the first vacuum tube instrument - a small monophonic keyboard called the Audion Piano (nicknamed by De Forest the "Squak-a-Phone"), but once more, it quacked an early death. However, vacuum tube technology was to take over the next era of electronic instruments from the 1920s onwards.

The theremin

The theremin, invented by Russian Lev Termen (also known as Leon Theremin), in 1920 remains the world's only true space control instrument - and one which has proved enigmatic, mysterious and popular for the last 85 years. Originally marketed by the RCA radio corporation as an instrument that "anyone who can hum, sing, or whistle" could play, it's unusually design of a cabinet with two aerials and nothing short of unconventional playing technique of the hands moving in the ether creating part of the electromagnetic circuit, one hand for pitch, the other for value - is visually hypnotic, but near impossible to master - which caused an untimely death, before it was revived in film soundtracks in the 1950s. The giant theremin, the Terpsitone, which the musician had to 'dance' the melody in a huge playing field was an even more challenging and bizarre incarnation which no longers exists. Only a handful of players over the years have truly mastered it, namely: 1930s Russian virtuoso Clara Rockmore, whose Art of the Theremin CD remains the classic theremin recording; Dr Samuel Hoffman, a chiropodist by day and thereminist by night who played on the soundtrack for spooky sci-fi and horror films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Spellbound.

Nowadays, everyone who is anyone plays the theremin to standards good, bad and indifferent- from Comedians like John Otway and Bill Bailey to more serious contenders like Leon Theremin's grand-niece Lydia Kavina - considered the world's greatest living thereminist. Slide, glide, shape, gyrate, imitate, modulate or create - although just a simple pure electronic tone, the theremin remains the ultimate electronic oddity. Its scope extends far beyond the spooky sounds of sci-fi popularised in the movies, it delves into the deepest realms of the sonic imagination.

More information:
http://www.thereminworld.com/
http://www.theremin.info/
http://www.hypnotique.net/theremin/index.htm

Ondes-Martenot

Another instruments using the principle of heterodyning oscillators actually caught on a little. In 1928, French telegraphist and cellist Maurice Martenot conceived and constructed the Ondes-Martenot. Much like the theremin, Martenot's instrument was intended to be integrated into the traditional orchestra and it is still featured in orchestras across the world, principally in Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony.

Some argue that the reason for the Ondes Martenot's success was that, unlike the theremin, it used a traditional keyboard layout, with a separate finger control for glissando and vibrato as well as keys to adjust the timbre. Martenot wowed the French academia to love and admire his instrument, even at the curse of more commercial electronic instruments like the Ondioline, and to an extent Martenot had a stranglehold over other electronic instruments being used in serious contemporary music, thanks to the support of French composers like Varese and Messiaen. The Ondes-Martenot also found its way into the sounds of Hollywood with Franz Waxman's 1936 score for The Bride of Frankenstein and the three Ondes-Martenot's score for Hitchcock's film Rebecca. Today the instrument is still manufactured and ever-popular, even Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead plays one on their albums Kid A and Amnesiac.

Electro-theremin

This instrument really does give off Good Vibrations, as it was used on THAT Beach Boys track. The electro-theremin is not actually a theremin as it isn't played in space, but uses an oscillator with a guiding keyboard base to allow for better pitch accuracy - a sort of cross between an Ondes Martenot and a Hawaiian slide guitar. The sound is closer to that of the Ondes than the theremin as it is less rich, using only a sine wave and no vibrato, sounding more 'other worldly' than the vocalistic theremin sound. The electro-theremin was created by actor and electronics wizard, Bob Whitsell in 1958, and it was made famous by former Glen Miller Trombonist Paul Tanner on the album Music from Heavenly Bodies, numerous TV and film soundtracks, and recordings with the Beach Boys. Tanner sold his electrotheremin in the late 1960s to a hospital to use for checking hearing when he felt keyboard synthesizers were taking over.

More information:
http://www.electrotheremin.com/

Rhythmicon

The brainchild of American avant-garde composer Henry Cowell in 1916, the Rhythmicon was the first prototype of a drum machine and sequencer. Cowell commissioned Russian inventor Leon Theremin to build him a machine capable of transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa, which used broken up light playing on a photo-electric cell. Cowell wrote only two piece on the instrument before losing interest. The Rhythmicon featured in some movies in the 1950s and 60s including Dr Strangelove and the Tangerine Dream album Rubicon. No working instruments exist today, but you can use a four part digital simulation on the internet on The Online Rhythmicon website, and record your 'hit' to their internet database.

More information:
The online rhythmicon

Ondioline

A rival instrument to the institutionally powerful Ondes-Martenot, the Ondioline achieved a little popularity in cabaret and popular music - and it was possibly the first instrument capable of imitating the sound of other instruments. Few working Ondiolines exist today, but one who has championed its cause is composer Jean-Jacques Perrey on his early albums with Gershon Kingsley like Kalaeidoscopic Vibrations and The In Sound From Way Out.

The Clavioline and Joe Meek

M Constant made the Clavioline in 1947, a monophonic, portable keyboard which can control octave, timble, attack, and vibrato. It recreated sounds of brass and string in a natural way, and was widely manufactured as a dance-hall organ, marketed as being suitable for "twist, trad and rock". The Clavioline was made popular by pop musicians like The Beatles, Sun Ra, and Joe Meek with the Tornadoes hit Telstar, inspired by the 1962 first satellite transmission. Meek added the sound of the Clavioline to create an otherworldly sound, and he also supposedly added the sound of a flushed toilet played backwards. The weird space-age single rocketed straight to No. 1 and became a worldwide smash hit. Symbolically, when the Telstar satellite became damaged, Meek's life became more and more shattered as his career failed and demons took him over. He killed his landlady in Holloway Road in London before taking his own life in 1967, aged just 37. Meek was a true sonic pioneer and his "Meeksville sound" of compression and close-micing influenced a generation of music producers.

More information:
http://www.clavioline.com/

Trautonium

In 1930, Dr. Friedrich Trautwein invented the Trautonium, the only instrument in the world capable of producing subharmonics, which are the mirror opposite of harmonics, or 'ghost' note like playing a string on a violin only half held down. Oscar Sala, a young student of Trautwein's, pioneered the development of the instrument and made the Mixtur-Trautonium, an improved polyphonic instrument which was used in the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, as the instrument sounded more ominous than the sound of real birds. The Trautonium has advantages over a synthesizer giving freedom of intonation like a fretless string instrument to play microtones and continuous, unrestricted variations of pitch, tone and volume. The player makes contact with a wire stretched over a metal strip to create a circuit. It was a forerunner to the modular synthesizers of the 1960s. Nearly all knowledge of the performance and workings of the Trautonium has died with Oscar Sala in 2002, but the album My Fascinating Instrument, which is available today, is testament to Sala's musical genius.

The evolution of the synthesizer

By the end of the 20th century, synthesizers had take over the world's aural landscape. To synthesize means to take many parts and make it whole, which is basically what a synthesizer does. It is a purely electronic instrument, in other words, it won't make a sound until you amplify it. The early synthesizers were analogue and huge - a whole room full of equipment - but 1970s transistor technology allowed for more portable instruments - and thus classic analogue synths like Bob Moog's Mini Moog, which is still being manufactured today, the ARP Odyssey and the WASP are still revered by techno and electronic musicians today for their "phat" and squelchy sounds. Electronic music took over the world - the highly conservative Musician's Union condemned synthesizers as non-musical, worried that they would replace the need for real, acoustic trained musicians - which indeed they have, as virtually every popular music track now uses synthesized, sampled and sequenced parts. The Japanese 1980s electronics boom made a cheap keyboard possible in every home - with Casio, Yahama and Roland models now available from only a few pounds.

RCA synthesizer

The synthesizer revolution started in 1956 when RCA unveiled its Electronic Music Synthesizer. Originally invented in the 1940s by engineers Harry Olson and Herbert Belar, they produced a machine based on random probability, which would be capable of creating melodies based on the folk songs of Stephen Foster . It used Sixteen Function Binary Selection and pitch sequencing, but the device failed miserably in its intention, as the machine was incapable of determining characteristics that only a human ear can - idiosyncrasies of form, structure and melody. Olson and Belar intended this prototype synthesizer not to explore new sonic worlds yearned for by the avant-garde, but to reproduce the conventional. The result was a series of seemingly random notes and bleeps. Their prototype synthesizer was eagerly seized by the intellectual music academia of Princeton University and the avant-garde composer Milton Babbit, and premiered in 1956 as the RCA MK 1. It featured vacuum tube oscillators and a punch paper interface that allowed the user to program and control a wide range of sound parameters, a little like a 19th century pianola. The output was fed to disk recording machines, which stored the results on lacquer-coated disks.

More information:
- Peter Forrest's The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers, RCA synth
- Mike Schutz's RCA synthesizer page

Synthesizers, their technologies and inventors have come and gone like the winds from world fairs to car boot sales in a flash. Here are a few of the more esoteric and innovative synthesizers:

EMS Synth

The EMS studios, founded in 1969 by English engineers and composer Peter Zinnovieff, created some of the more important synthesizers of their era, including the forerunner to software synthesis. The VCS3 was their classic synth which is still made today - operated with a joystick and a pinboard (instead of bulky patch leads) - making it also perfect for a game of battleships. The amazing sounds of the VCS 3 are unmatchable and great for ethereal sound effects. Zorch were Britain's first all synthesizer band who headlined the first Stonehenge Festival, their psychedelic "head" music was matched with a mind blowing lightshow. Their first album "Ouroboros" is the only album ever recorded at Peter Zinovieff's EMS studio in 1975, featuring the classic VCS3 Synthi 100.

More information:
- Zorch's official website
- EMS Studios Homepage

ANS glass synthesizer

The ANS is a photo-electronic instrument from Russia, made in 1958. Based on the photo-optic sound recording used in cinematography to create a visible image of a sound wave, the machine has a rotating glass disk with 144 optic phonograms of pure tones, or sound tracks, from high in the centre to low at the rim; the player selects a tone from a "score" made from a glass disk. The ANS is capable of producing 720 pure tones of everything from microtones to white noise.
You can hear the mysterious and somewhat "glassy" sounds in the new album COILANS by Coil members Jhon Balance, Peter Christopherson and Thighpaulsandra who recorded the album during a few days at the Moscow State University.

More information:
www.martin.homepage.ru/ans.htm

Buchla Modular

Don Buchla has been making world class modular synths since 1963, his latest invention the Piano Bar - a way of converting sounds from an acoustic piano to a midi (computerized) map - is now manufactured and produced by his old competitor, Bob Moog. With Serialist composer Morton Subotnik, they produced the seminal work, Silver Apples On The Moon (1967), the first work to be commissioned for record rather than live performance. A 'studio art' work, they believed it could be played, via a phonograph, by anybody, in intimate surrounds - a kind of 20th century chamber music style. Subotnik believed that using both programmed and random parameters allowed him complete artistic control, and "…the flexibility to score some sections of the piece in the traditional sense; and to mould other like a piece of sculpture". The Buchla allowed for evolving timbres during a single note duration, making possible "sustained yet transforming streams of sound".

More information:
www.buchla.com/

Inventors & pioneers

The evolution of electronic music, until the corporate 1980s, was driven by inspired individuals - inventors, scientists, musicians who were more often than not part-genius and part-lunatic. Many created equipment and instruments to create new sounds for their own recordings, purely out of a desire to produce something new more than for commercial gain. Here are a few of Switched On's favourite electronic pioneers:

Raymond Scott

In the early 40s, Raymond Scott, the young leader of the CBS radio house band found fame composing quirky jazz-influenced scores for Warner Brothers' "Merrie Melodies" and "Loony Toons" cartoons. Despite his success with his quintet, Scott preferred working in the studio with machines rather than the musicians who could never quite match his exacting standards. Jazz singer Anita O'Day believed that Scott "reduced musicians to something like wind-up toys."

In 1946 Scott founded Manhattan Research, Inc., "Designers and Manufacturers of Electronic Music and Musique Concrete Devices and Systems," where he focused his efforts on creating the machines that could meet his requirements. In 1949, Scott remarked:
"Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely THINK his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener".

He created a sound effects machine called the Karloff, and his most commercially successful instrument, the Clavivox, like a theremin played with a keyboard. To realize his notion of "thought transference" composition, Scott spent twenty years working on the Electronium, an "instantaneous composition-performance machine". It had no keyboard, only switches and settings, and was a pitch and rhythm sequencer that controlled a bank of oscillators, a modified Hammond organ, an Ondes-Martenot and a few Clavivoxes. In 1960 on the Electronium he produced his three-volume work of minimalist synthesized lullabies, Soothing Sounds for Baby.

Despite his success, Scott was very protective, perhaps even paranoid, of people stealing his ideas, thus Manhattan Research remained purely research. In 1955 a young theremin maker, 20 year old Robert Moog, called at his studio on Long Island, and he was given a job assembling the Clavivox. Raymond Scott's work was to directly influence the next generation of electronic instrument designers who went on to realise his dream of what he called the "artistic collaboration between man and machine."

BBC Radiophonic Workshop & the Wobbulator

In 1957, a group of BBC producers used radiophonic technique to create music for dramas, modifying natural sounds using tape loops, tape modulations and splicing, similar to Pierre Schaeffer's academic technique of music concrete. In the 1960s, the Radiophonic workshop became a household name with their pioneering recordings on the BBC science fiction show Dr Who. Stars of the workshop including Delia Derbyshire and its founder Daphne Oram, who created the technique of Oramics - drawing onto strips of 35mm film read by photo-electric cells which controlled the sound characteristics - a technique developed from the RCA synthesizer. Daphne later left the BBC to pursue her career of creating serious art music. Early on, the Workshop acquired a wobbulator, originally designed as a test tone generator, it created a tone varied by a second oscillator which providing sweeping waves of sound. Delia Derbyshire's Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO, composed for a sci-fi play based on an Isaac Asimov story, uses backwards voices and the tones of the Wobbulator.

More information:
Radiophonic workshop: an engineering persective

Reed Ghazalas Circuit bending

Reed Ghazalas is know as 'the father of circuit bending' - he's been doing it since the 1960s. The circuit-bent instrument, often a re-wired audio toy or game, creates a new instrument and a new musical vocabulary, which is part of Reed Ghazalas' 'anti theory' of opening up electronic to all audio frontiers, creating chance music and unpredictable audio events. You don't need to be have money, expensive instruments, or knowledge of electronics - just a speak-and-spell machine and a few parts from a radio store! Body contact is encouraged for the electricity to flow through the player's flesh and blood. Don't try this one at home, kids!

More infomation:
www.anti-theory.com

As electronic hardware is increasingly replaced with electronic software, perhaps the era of electronic oddities, bizarre boxes with sliders to fade, knobs to twiddle, and keys to hammer, is drawing to a close. Yet in the 1990s, musicians brought their old synthesizers, machines and theremins our of the bargain bin and began to recognize again the magical sounds which had so nearly become lost. So why not invent your own electronic oddity? It could prove to be the sounds of the future.

1920s NOISE MACHINES - Italian Futurist's - Russolo

'Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men.' -- Luigi Russolo

Luigi Russolo was a painter determined to open our ears to the noise of the modern age. His musical vision embraced 'the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jilting of a tram on its rails' – the symphonic blending of sounds that defined life in the urban metropolis of the early 1900s.

Russolo wrote his manifesto in 1913 entitled 'The Art of Noise,' a bold treatise declaiming the end of conventional Western music, and the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, exploding, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments.

'Every manifestation of life is accompanied by noise. Noise is therefore familiar to our ears and has the power to remind us immediately of life itself. Musical sound, a thing extraneous to life and independent of it... has become to our ears what a too familiar face is to our eyes' – Luigi Russolo

Luigi Russolo and his assistant Ugo Piatti built one of the first mechanical orchestras, the 'intonarumori' (noise machines), 27 different types of inters, each producing a unique sound in several folloies or 'families' of instruments, including 'howlers,' 'exploders,' 'crumplers,' 'hissers,' and 'scrapers.' In the 1920s, Russolo performed numerous concerts with these outrageous instruments emitting their startling sounds.

The 'Intonarumori' ('Noise Machines'),
built by Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo circa 1920s

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~ Lifted from www.zakros.com & reprinted here without permission ~

Unheralded Industrialists - Industrial Nation #19, 2004

RANDOM SAMPLES: UNHERALDED INDUSTRIALISTS
by Todd Zachritz


Hello and welcome back. This issue, I'd like to take you on a bit of a field trip, away from the current experimental sounds and into the past. This time, I'm going to focus on the old-school industrial and experimental music--stuff that seems to have been all but forgotten and neglected in these days of futurepop and industrial/gothic metal. Sure, everyone should be more than familiar with THROBBING GRISTLE, CABARET VOLTAIRE, BOYD RICE, COIL, CHRIS & COSEY, WHITEHOUSE, CURRENT 93, NURSE WITH WOUND, TEST DEPT, and the likes. These were important artists, to be certain, but there were many more from the same period making truly bizarre and decidedly non-commercial sounds, often to a very small and insular audience. These 'missing' legends of the 'Wild Planet' scene are what I will focus on here. Step right up..

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From what basically seems to be the birthplace of what is historically termed 'industrial' music, England, came the BOURBONESE QUALK. From 1980 to 1987, members Simon Crab, Steven Tanza, and Julian Gilbert (and later guitarist Miles Miles) were to release 5 now-classic LPs, from 'Laughing Afternoon' to the self-titled 'Bourbonese Qualk'. The versatile band moved effortlessly from aggressive and noise-laced rock sounds to cinematic tribal-ethno-percussive experiments to emotive soundtracks without films. Equally as influenced by CAN as by THROBBING GRISTLE, the QUALK's electronic programming gelled with live instrumentation into a seamless mix that would herald the work of later Wax Trax!-era artists. Later releases (like the landmark 1987 release, 'My Government Is My Soul') even brought in elements of funk, dub and techno to the mix. A dark outlook permeated the group's many recordings, and politics and shock value didn't so much define the group as season it. BOURBONESE QUALK's recordings may now be difficult to find, as they were released in many formats on many obscure European labels through the years, but any of their work merits attention.

For details on their releases and free MP3s, visit http://www.bourbonesequalk.com

KONSTRUKTIVISTS formed in 1982, based around Glenn Michael Wallis, who was a roadie/touring mate of THROBBING GRISTLE and sometime member of WHITEHOUSE. KONSTRUKTIVISTS were a psychotronic group that focused on spacy electronic reverberations and more accessable beat-oriented material that was unquestionably a major influence on some of the later 'industrial dance' acts. Having recorded the now-sought-after early vinyl LPs like 1983's 'Psykho-Genetika' on underground labels like Third Mind, the group eventually went into a sort of hibernation from 1985 to 1990. Emerging in 1990 with refreshed lineup, the group released a stream of electronic CDs on labels like the UK's Jara Discs and World Serpent. These were more techno-influenced works that were met with mostly indifference, likely due to lack of promotion and publicity. KONSTRUKTIVISTS continue on today with Wallis being the sole member. A variety of CD reissues of their early work have been released, so the wonder of KONSTRUKTIVISTS can be felt all over again. http://www.klanggalerie.com/konsort/

From San Francisco, there was FACTRIX -- a group of artists including Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph P. Jacobs who formed in 1978 from the ashes of another seminal post-punk act, MINIMAL MAN. As FACTRIX, the group released a number of subversive and 'dangerous' recordings back in the early '80s. Their incredible 'Scheintot' LP was a document of morbid, moody, and subtle experimental rock that is as eerily unsettling today as it must have been way back in 1981 when it was initially released. Their 1982 LP, 'California Babylon', was recorded live with vocal contributions from the notorious MONTE CAZAZZA, and remains a rough and violent selection of guitar-noise deconstructions and primitive machine-noise rumblings. Conversely, the 'Empire Of Passion/Splice Of Life' 7" was a marvelously sinister bit of apocalyptic sound-poetry and industrial soundscaping. All of these releases have been criminally out-of-print for years, but fortunately, the fine Tesco label has released a double-CD collection of FACTRIX's legendary recordings, entitled 'Artifact'. This compiles tracks from the group's many cassette and vinyl recordings at last onto digital format for a new audience to hear and appreciate. Order the CD or read more about FACTRIX at Tesco's website, at http://www.tesco-distro.com.

(Editors note-- For more about FACTRIX go to Factrix: Industrial Music Pioneers (fan site); for Factrix mp3s, visit http://music.download.com/factrix.)

Another act that never received much notice stateside was 23 SKIDOO. Formed in England in 1979, this collective (led by Alex Turnbull, Johnny Turnbull, Fritz Catlin, and Sketch) released a small, but highly-influential amount of vinyl 12"es and LPs. Their LP, 'The Culling Is Coming', dared to combine post-TG noise and cutup work with meditational and rich multi-cultural percussive experiments. The track 'Mahakala', from 'Culling', is a solemn ritual piece that invokes some dark and contemplative spirits. Other releases, like the 'Just Like Everybody' LP, brought a virulent strain of mutant electro-funk later co-opted (and sampled prominently) by acts like THE FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON and the CHEMICAL BROTHERS. The cut, 'Gregouka', from their 1982 'Tearing Up The Plans' 12", blended ancient Moroccan music with dark electronics to creepy effect. After years of being out-of-print, 23 SKIDOO's back catalogue is supposedly now available on CD. And the group has since returned to performance and recording, reportedly in a more dance/hip-hop vein.

MAYBE MENTAL were another largely-forgotten post-industrial act in the late 80s. Likely best-known for their split 1987 LP with CONTROLLED BLEEDING (entitled 'Halved'), MAYBE MENTAL were formed in Arizona in 1982 by David Oliphant. The group mined the atmospheric industrial arena as well or better than most of their underground peers. Their 1985 cassette release, 'To Cease Burning', was a textural post-industrial landscape of tonal fragments, cinematic noise, and fractured collages--which still holds up next to any modern-day experimental outfit. Other early cassette releases veered into traditional noise and power electronics territories, but later recordings were spiced up with field recordings, found tapes, and other more subtle and diverse influences, culminating in their landmark 1987 LP, 'Lotuses On Fire', which heralded the group's interest in rich multi-cultural instrumentation and ritual textures that would later play a key role in the band's transition to the formidable LIFE GARDEN. As LIFE GARDEN, Oliphant and company went on to release a number of simultaneously meditational, tribal, and percussive tapes and CDs, including some collaborative works with the equally as transcendent VOICE OF EYE.

The mysterious German/English group GERECHTIGKEITS LIGA only released one LP, but 'Hypnotischer Existenzialismus' made some waves upon it's release in 1985 on Graeme Revell & Brian Lustmord's legendary Side Effects Records. This long out-of-print record featured a series of very industrial-sounding compositions recorded live. From percussive attacks with megaphone-style declarations to ritualistic ambience, G.LIGA influenced some prominent artists of their day, including cEvin Key and Bill Leeb. Fans of any of the classic, early industrialists would do well to seek out this fine recording from a time long past.

Almost as mysterious and fleeting was the group LAST FEW DAYS, who gained a measure of prominence for their early collaborations with LAIBACH. They released precious few recordings in the early part of the 1980s, but the LP, 'Pure Spirit And Saliva', was a compilation of live performances from 1983-1986. The group eschewed studio recordings in favor of live actions, and musically, LFD relied on drum machines, strange tape effects, and clanking percussion assaults to paint rough, feral onslaughts of environmental and urban sound. LAST FEW DAYS were one of the missing links between early avante-garde 'industrial' scene and the later beat-oriented dance and EBM splinters. 'Pure Spirit' is a marvelous and influential recording that has oddly escaped CD reissue to this day.

Finally, we have the obscure but very important DELIA DERBYSHIRE. Not an 'industrial' artist by any stretch, Delia worked at England's BBC Workshop in the 1960s and 1970s, creating some very early electronic and experimental music for TV and radio soundtracks. If you've heard the theme for the classic sci-fi series 'Dr. Who', then you have heard some of Delia's work. She took many chances and composed her themes using exotic sources (like animal sounds), often challenging her employers as well as her listeners in a time when electronic music was not accepted or taken seriously. Her interests and work in these avante-garde arenas led to encounters with many prominent rock and psychedelic musicians of the day, and it is certain that some, if not most, went away with new ideas borrowed from Delia. She passed away in 2001, but not before starting some new electronic musical projects with former Spacemen 3/Spectrum mainman Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom). Her lovingly-crafted website has free MP3 samples available, as well as a complete bio of this visionary artist. http://www.delia-derbyshire.org

And there you have it. To see the future you must know the past. Or something like that.


[this article originally published in INDUSTRIAL NATION magazine #19, 2004]

factrix

"THE TAPE DECAYS" by Jon Savage, 1981 (article on Throbbing Gristle)

"...Cut-up incantations. Click. Machines hum. Silence clears. Slowly, the tape recorders start to spin: the vortex is set in motion. IBM computer tape: deprogram. Bass throb, guitar alert. Vocal incantations. The vortex, ever slowly, whirl faster; faster, faster. I awake from my dream and lazily concentrate on a group near the front of the audience. From my dream I see agitation, hatred, violence. The machines spin: the dream continues. In the past, it has encompassed boredom, fear, excitement: tonight it continues, incantations, even stronger than before, a perfect soundtrack.

I awake again. The group are scratching themselves, are rousing. Flexing their muscles. Their intent is focusing as the sound changes to a heartbeat. As they focus, so do I. I notice more things. Like whom they are, like how drunk they are. I start to sense trouble. The people on stage sing about limits, about horror, about extreme pain. The vortex winds up. Their power begins to infect the group near the front: the deprogramming takes effect. The vortex twists: the group takes shape as three/four women. They start to mutter: nothing yet coherent yet anger, disgust. I am now fully awake, being slowly drawn as the vortex extends.

They start to shout now. The noise takes shape uglier, as the vortex takes hold of the people on stage. Somewhere about this time, the vortex locks - I don't know when. Held on course, all events are now inevitable. Two of the women move towards the stage: I see that they are aggressive in their femininity, carefully disordered in their demeanor - contrasting with the control rigid on the people on the stage. Demons are waiting to be let out: the box is being pried open. The first move: the Security Guard - a callow youth - tries to usher the girls aside. This is the chance: he is surrounded, jostled. His youth, once stolid, now seems frail: the women confuse, and taunt him. Suddenly the people on the stage, their obsessive aura, become very fragile: their spell falters.

The vortex spins to suck me in: I place my body between the women and boy. Somehow, they back off. The vortex recoups. I hope that it's over. The people on the stage shriek. The women start to shout again, redoubled. Things now happen quickly: the vortex whirls in a dervish dance. The man at the front of the stage looks at the women: he throws their aggression back in their face. Purple, he fixes them with his eyes. His fist bangs his head with terrible force, in time. Whack, whack. Although the violence is self-directed; the message is clear. The women are past noticing. One of them finishes the whiskey bottle, hurls it at the stage. One of the performers' moves -- leaps instantly off the stage, floors one of the women. The vortex exults.

The noise screws up into a ball, a whorl of sound: the woman parody a tribal dance in their anger. Their naturalism masks hate, the same as the people on stage mask their explorations with terror. There is no sync. Guitars tear, voices scream. One of the women walks with childlike wonder to the very front of the stage and looks down. She picks up a bunch of wires, delicately, as though they were flowers. She looks at them. Time stops. The vortex is at its center. Careful modernity, art appreciation is stripped away -- animalism takes over. Chaotic, dangerous, real. A man screams 'You fucking wanker!' with incredible violence, to nobody in particular; a chair flies through the air, followed by shrieks, behind me. I want my dream I can't have it, feel like crying, stomach constricted. The rest dissolves into flotsam as the vortex fades, its' spell bound: hospitals, useless arguments, recriminations. A sleepless night....

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July 6th, 1978: Three and a half years later, another era, I play a tape of the concert. There is no record of the anger, the violence, the hate. Directly, that is. Perhaps you can hear the vortex in the noise. Perhaps it never happened. When the tape decays, it never will have. Memories lie. The fragile set of circumstances and people that caused the events at the London Film Makers' Co-op have now gone. A few hours later, you could go over the same spot and not know that anything had happened. I know that it happened, but then it could have been my own mounting madness -- a month later, I was quite ill.

Certainly, that time was the last that I saw Throbbing Gristle receive a reaction that was in any way hostile. Sure, to admit to liking them was still a passport to an instant, vicious argument in most circles, but during the months that followed, Throbbing Gristle started to receive a reaction which was almost worse: acceptance, worship even. As soon as that happened, they were bound to stop. It was always one paradox close to TG that although they toyed openly with the pop process and pop language - with "United" in particular - they wouldn't, nor couldn't ever have had pop success or any fan mania. Instinct and deliberation kept them carefully confined by most on the lunatic fringe. A reference point, and a shudder.

Now that the dust has settled, I think of TG in terms of a laboratory. In this laboratory many matters were poured over, researched, put into practice, and lived out: that last is quite important. The laboratory, as all research institutes, needed funding: for various reasons support from institutional sources were not forthcoming, so it was back to free enterprise - of which, as any honest person will tell you - the music industry is the final bastion.

In theory, it's quite simple: you announce that you are 'in the music industry' by placing yourself there or at least near enough. This means playing 'gigs', making the right connections with the pop press and various people, and finally - for these are the rules of this game - release a product. It is thus a grave mistake to consider TG in terms of their records alone (although "Second Annual Report" and "Heathen Earth" will do quite nicely, thank you) because they are, at the most basic level, functional -- for they are the passport to this particular arena - Pop music - which, for a brief time (1976-80) really mattered. It doesn't now of course, so please don't believe those who tell you it does, for they are serving their own (and others) vested interests.

Like the Sex Pistols, TG understood this -- although occasionally, like many others, they allowed their immersion in the medium to blind themselves to this fact-as-occupational-hazard. However, the noise, while important, was ancillary. I see Throbbing Gristle as being very absolute seekers after a particular truth and set of truths. Truths about the limits of human behavior that we are encouraged to ignore - love, despair, coercion, bestiality, repose, intense sexuality, frustration and incredible violence.

Ever present was that ultimate and final truth that is now perhaps the biggest taboo and which most of us rush headlong to deny with whatever lies to hand. DEATH. Ever present was the suggestion that there are people in the upper echelons of power society who are aware that unquestioning acceptance of this social and behavioral confusion by the majority preserved their privileges, and that these people use the mass media and consumerism to perpetuate this situation.

I've spent the last years of my life working in commercial media. That is, information packaged for consumption in order to make money for large organizations. (TG often declared they were involved in an information war.) Most of what you read and hear is produced in accordance with these "package- consume- money" conditions as we are encouraged to live not our own but others lives. This is not an entirely irrevocable fact of life in our present state.

From my work I now understand that mainstream media seeks to ignore any Truths as much as it can. This force, with such power over our lives, actually prevents us from realizing certain root facts -- we all die, and virtually everything presented to us on this material plans is one long trivial diversion and denial of that fact. There is, of course, considerable pleasure in trivia, in consumption - otherwise it wouldn't work - but it is important to realize that our life is temporary and that the way we live is a temporary state - brought on by various economic and social forces - and that, contrary to the propaganda, we needn't and won't live this way much longer. This realization is at once terrifying and liberating.

Although I will dash down to Virgin Records with the best of them (so good on Saturdays with the knifings outside), I tend to prefer noise that has some recognition and exploration of this fact: Utopia and Dystopia. I hear it in the Sex Pistols, in the Velvet Underground, in NON, in Joy Division, and in various pieces of classical music to name a few, in the same way that I hear the pleasure and ultimate futility of consumption delineated by Roxy Music. I hear it too, in Throbbing Gristle.

Our society works by pretending that ours is the only age; the past, the future do not exist except in terms of the present: the best work is that which doesn't remind you, but puts you into other, future, past, alternative present ways of thinking and being. Mind you, I wouldn't pretend to have always ever agreed with TG, individually and together: nor would I pretend that I play all their records all the way through all the time. Such would require more time than I am prepared to give to plastic, or even the seductive qualities of chrome tape, these days. Such would also pre-suppose a harmony with the product that I don't always feel. Apart from those two, perfect dream machine records that bookend TG's pre-post-humous work, the albums suffer from that intensity that makes the individual tracks so valuable as a whole.

While as game and as manic as the next person, it is difficult either to enter each state so particularly delineated on 'D.O.A' or '20 Jazz Funk Greats' or to pass over each as Muzak: perhaps everybody should be able, if they're bothered, to make up their own 'Best Of' on tape, and, well, go... (this criticism incidentally could also be applied to the Velvet Underground). And the records aren't that important, although I will cherish 'Beachy Head', 'Six Six Sixties', 'Adrenalin', and 'Weeping', among others; what are equally as important are the ideas and their execution. The list is long, but worth detailing; for this, as much as the search to define and capture various truths, was also the aim of the laboratory.

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A Summary :

The end of 'Rock-n-Roll' as an attitude, as a way of knowledge, and as a way of making noise, kindly called music. Rock-n-Roll is for Arse Lickers. Rock and Roll, and now Pop, are infected with a creeping and terminal disease: the inevitability of obsolescence as a form.

The impossibility of running a truly independent record and tape company: Most Indies - although apparently shifting the emphasis 'away' from the majors - actually worked for them as unpaid A&R departments. Most of the brave new wave only ever wanted one thing: money, and to get their mug on 'Top of the Pops'. This, although possibly venal, is not a particularly ignoble ambition given the state of things -- what is ignoble, is to pretend otherwise. I will now watch with amusement the ideological U-turns of such as Rough Trade, in the same way as I have watched the U-turns of most Pop commentators. Industrial Records - a zingy catch phrase also thereby introduced - was determinedly independent. This caused problems with pressing plants, bootleggers and cash flow, but it allowed the freedom to release whatever (and who else, Monte Cazazza?) and to pack it in at the right time.

The proper assimilation of electronics into pop and youth culture: and this is where TG come nearest to being assimilated by the mainstream, and like all of us, nearest to prolonging its active life.

A sense that, after punk, four boys pouting and banging away on electric guitars had to stop, that the chill winds starting to blow outside pop's ivory tower had to be admitted. Jane Suck, Sandy Robertson and I all realized this with a start -- the first TG LP arrived exactly to confirm the suspicions and prophecies we made with 'New Musick', and then took them further. The result is, on the one hand, artists such as NON; on the other, Gary Numan and synthed up oldies like 'It's My Party'. Heigh-ho.

The use of different media: Pre-dating the 'Indie tape boom', Industrial Records were the first of the then current crop of independents to organize a proper system of producing and selling tape-recorded and video-recorded material. This was organized with the care and attention that we came to expect: the TG Tape Box Set is an obsessional fetish of considerable power. I don't come over it...but nearly. TG also made everything available. I prefer to regard this not as a piece of self-indulgence, but as an impressive effort at equality of access, deconstruction and making money. Malcolm McLaren later got in on that act and did it rather well. Many people thought he had invented the idea.

Many minor fashions and teases, witness by the fact that TG were just as fascinated by the trappings of consumption, kitsch and packaging as the rest of us. Their presentation of products was never more than immaculate graphic design: they used camo-chic before Miss Selfridge and Echo & the Bunnymen got in on the act. They used it as packaging (of "Adrenalin" and "Subhuman" singles), clothing and research, eventually having an entire TG camouflage uniform made by Lawrence Dupre in Paris as part of her "Avant Guerre" clothing project.

The Martin Denny Revival: Predating the current obsession with 1940's Muzak and the Specials' mood hi-fi. TG finished almost every gig with Martin Denny tapes, did the track "Exotica" in honor of his styles on "Jazz Funk Greats" and dedicated their "Greatest Hits" to Denny. TG were a little late on this one. The Screamers, Skot Armst, the Residents and Boyd Rice got there first. However, P-Orridge now has 23 Martin Denny platters. Eat your heart out!

The championing of cassette tapes as a valid ALTERNATIVE to records: Produced on high-quality tape and run off laboriously by them and a few close friends until the Last Few Days. As well as releasing every TG live gig on cassette they also released cassettes by Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, Richard H. Kirk, Monte Cazazza, Leather Nun, and Chris Carter. All artists they had admired before their later success, of course now three years later cassettes are at last being recognized as viable commercially and creatively. Ironically, as TG stopped producing anymore. They saw having other groups and individuals on their cassettes as evidence of a new and non-competitive alliances that demonstrated the lie of big company rivalry.

Contrary to recent claims in some music papers, TG released the first music video cassettes for sale. Totally filmed, produced, mixed and packaged by themselves in 1979 and sold at £18 including postage to demonstrate that independent labels and groups can compete at every level and make every kind of information available.

A serious and conscious continuation of the work of William S. Burroughs, (whose LP "Nothing Here Now But The Recordings" is still available on Industrial Records), Brion Gysin (the inventor of "Cut-Ups"), and The Velvet Underground: Of course TG are not quite the same, as this is a self-conscious, synthetic, intensely referential age, but they do quite well in dealing with control, collage, and the subculture of street life in fairly equal quantities. Anyway, they've met most of their heroes by now. I suppose you could whine about the "Beat Revival" being prophesied but I wouldn't bother.

An uncanny premonition of the Sex Pistols scandal, when as Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle various parts of their "PROSTITUTION" exhibition were besieged in the I.C.A. for being pornography. Front-page headlines, outraged editorials in the dailies, M.P.'s calling them the "Wreckers of Civilization" -- they even appeared in a live TV special on Thames on October 22nd, 1976. Fab and Kinky, and McLaren (who'd already commissioned Peter of TG to do Sex Pistols publicity shots) was watching again.

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But that'll be quite enough. I'm sure you get the picture. Front line cultural guerrillas whose research was pillaged and diluted by all manner of incompatible characters perhaps...their eyes must be burning but it doesn't do to be nice and TG weren't nice anyway so I'll say that they were a bunch of evil scumbags with a nasty line in vicious humour which nobody ever quite got. I see P-Orridge as the 10-year-old outsider: runny nose, spots, hanging on the other kid's coat tails and whining forever so you wanted to smash him, 'Zyklon! Zyklon! Zyklon! Zyklon! Bee Zombiees!'. And then he smiled and you forgave him all, such a sweet boy Neil. I will spare the others my indelicate imaginings, for they have enough problems.

The laboratory is now locked -- the camo' overalls, and the people inside them have moved office and moved power focus. Naturally, the week that TG ceased to exist they received the first in what has become a regular series of apologies and eulogies in the established music press - whose ignorance and muffled hate, if they only knew it, gave them a great deal of strength. Now, their recantation, however sincere, gives mirth; such is ever the price of cultural deviancy: to be ignored and reviled while active and when finished, to be lauded to the skies. Only these days, things being what they are, all accelerating and cracking up, it's happened rather faster. Like INSTANTLY.

I wish them all luck with their analysis: TG are now part of the "rock canon", they have left a "significant body of work" behind. The only problem, and the last laugh, is that it's all junk really - as serious or as meaningful as you want to make it. Which leaves TG exactly where I suspect they'd like to be -- just kicking around a corpse.

~ London & JON SAVAGE (Manchester, 1981)